PAULINE NJOROGE: With USAID Fund Freeze, America Must Forget About Its Decades-Long Global Influence

President Donald Trump’s decision to shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will have a similar if not greater damaging impact on the US as the countries that have benefited from the generosity and solidarity of the American people since 1961 when President J.F Kennedy established the USAID.

You see, USAID has not only been a mechanism for the US to support development and humanitarian causes in developing countries around the world, but as America’s most powerful soft power tool, it has also been at the forefront of promoting America’s global dominance in the last 63 years.

USAID has helped advance America’s security and commercial interests with greater success than similar agencies have done for their countries, in ways that Trump or his MAGA base cannot grasp.

In 2017, USAID reported that America has benefitted from the aid it extends to countries in significant ways. The agency described how US taxpayer dollars spent through foreign aid had contributed to America’s economic success at home and abroad.

A worker removes the signage outside of the USAID headquarters in Washington, DC, on Friday. Photo: CNN

As aid dollars developed the the people and economies of these countries, they had in turn become critical export markets for American goods, and sources of raw materials for key American value chains such as aviation and telecommunications.

The agency thus concluded that without these countries, America’s economy would have at some point slid into recession.

Trump may erroneously think that shutting down USAID will save America the $64B that the agency gave out in 2023, but unknown to him, he is partly putting America’s export market that accounts for 27% of America’s GDP and responsible for creation of more than 11 million jobs at risk.

Power abhors a vacuum. Countries that have been relying on USAID’s financial support will survive, by either finding resources locally to plug the funding deficit or by turning to old and new allies like France, Germany, Japan and the U.K.

But as they do this, America must forget her influence as it has been for the last six (6) decades that USAID has been the star of global humanitarianism.

And it does not help matters that on top of pulling America from global humanitarianism, he is actively undermining other foreign policy pillars such as trade through imposition of unnecessary trade tariffs on important trade partners like China, Japan, Canada and Mexico.

The writer is a Kenyan political strategist and a communications specialist.